Filling the void

Pasadena school board set to review applications for district’s open at-large seat

The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education will begin screening applications next week in hopes of filling a two-year board vacancy, a byproduct of the decision to change elections in the Pasadena Unified School District from at large to districts.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the six sitting board members will begin poring over 38 applications for the seat left open by Board member Kim Kenne’s decision to leave that post and seek a four-year term in her newly created District 1. Board members Ramon Miramontes and Ed Honowitz did not seek re-election in March, and Tyron Hampton won the April runoff for the new District 3 seat. With incumbent Board members Scott Phelps and Elizabeth Pomeroy winning re-election in their respective districts, and Board President Renatta Cooper and Board member Tom Selinske still serving their previous terms in Seats 4 and 6, respectively, one seat remains open.

From the pool of candidates for the job, board members will select eight names for consideration and rank them in descending order. The top three rankings will receive four, three and two points, respectively, and the remaining five will each receive one point.

After all of the points are added, the top-ranked applicants will be interviewed by the board early next month. From there, board members will once again rank their choices until someone is chosen. The at-large board member will serve until the seat, along with the two remaining seats — 2, 4, 6 — sunset in 2015

“Hopefully we will have some consensus or commonality on the top six to eight candidates and then they will be invited back for interviews in June,” said Cooper. “I am hoping we will be able to reach clear consensus. I know there are people who are trying to organize to push for an election, which would be very expensive, and most likely voter turnout would be very low and take money away from the kids. “

According to City Clerk Mark Jomsky, his office has not received the necessary paperwork required to start a petition to collect signatures for a special election.

The vacant board seat has left several political factions jockeying for position. Some residents in Sierra Madre are upset that they have no local representation on the board. Sierra Madre is represented by Seat 6, which does not come up for election until 2015.Board members themselves also have a stake in the winner, because with a 3-3 divide, the appointee could shift the balance to either side.

Also, some Latino residents in Altadena and Pasadena are unhappy because the change to the voting system from an at-large to a neighborhood system, which was specifically designed to produce more Latino board members, left the district with no elected Latino representation.

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Comments

Actually a fair amount of residents in Sierra Madre are upset because our BOE vote was stolen by a bunch of destructive leftwing idiots from ACT and other equally reprehensible fey front organizations. The suspicion being that race was the criteria. That, along with the poorly planned destruction of Sierra Madre's Middle School without any plan to replace it, along with the established fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Measure TT bond money is being frittered away on crony consultant after crony consultant, is upsetting to some. Just so you know how the captives are feeling these days.

posted by Erwin Chusid on 5/23/13 @ 12:22 p.m.

Erwin: clearly SM residents have reason to feel frustrated. what should be considered is possibly a lack of participation in the sub districting process lead to a period where you ended being to odd man out with the staggering of terms. the lack of participation may have stemmed from complacency because you had it so good for so long. your own virtually self contained middle class middle school was not the only construction project stalled when the district realized that ambitiously going full speed ahead with the bond projects was enabling too many contractors from stealing too much money.